sketcher, scene-painter, actor, gold-buyer and estate agent, was a son of Thomas Coleman Dibdin (1810-93), the London painter and lithographer who lithographed Louisa Clifton 's view of Koombana Bay, Western Australia, and other Australian works. Presumably trained by his father, R.L. Dibdin was in Queensland by 1864. A well-known townsman described as a 'gentleman artist’, he painted the scenic backdrop for the first performance of the Rockhampton Dramatic Society in March, a 'comedietta’ called Nine Points of the Law performed in Grant’s Music Hall. He also played the leading role of Joseph Ironside.
Dibdin is considered Rockhampton’s first resident painter. His sketch for Death of Troopers Power and Cahill was reproduced in the Illustrated Sydney News in December 1867. In 1870 he painted a view of the Central Queensland Meat Export Company’s meatworks at Lakes Creek, Rockhampton. A surviving watercolour of Keppel Island was possibly drawn on Easter Saturday 1870, when Dibdin chartered the steamship Mary to take a picnic party to Emu Park (near Yeppoon) and Keppel Island.
By 1878 Dibdin was working as a land agent in Rockhampton. That year he advertised for sale a subdivision of land owned by A.C. Praed, husband of the novelist Rosa Praed. Then once the Mount Morgan mines opened in the 1880s, Dibdin became a gold-buyer. He was in charge of the Mount Morgan-Rockhampton gold escort until the railway was built. The founding secretary of the Rockhampton Separation Committee, Dibdin remained an active advocate for the creation of a new North Queensland colony (with Rockhampton as its capital).
Few extant art works have been identified although he apparently continued drawing for most of his life. In 1913 four Dibdin original illustrations for the Queensland School Reader (including The Irish Emigrant ) were lent to the Queensland Art Society’s Brisbane exhibition by Mr A.J. Cumming.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
